Everyone who depends on the Colorado River wants the same thing: their fair share. The trouble is that no one agrees on what that is, and no one believes the other side is telling the truth about it.
A grudge older than the dams
That is not new. In 1922, when the other states refused to write a California dam into the Compact, Herbert Hoover, running the talks in Santa Fe, summoned the California delegation to his hotel room. In the Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik’s account, Hoover called their demand “outrageous, scandalous” and threatened to:
“announce that Boulder Dam project is dead, and that you are the people who killed Cock Robin.”
The Californians stomped out. Hoover had to follow them and plead with them to stay.
Arizona refused to ratify the Compact for 22 years. In 1934 its governor sent National Guard troops by ferry to stop Parker Dam, and the ferry ran aground on a sandbar. Arizona then sued California in a case that began in 1952, took 11 years to reach a decision, and did not end with a final decree until 2006. A century and a half after Powell’s boats first went down the river, distrust here is older than most of the institutions trying to manage it.
Every voice, same fear
Read this year’s comments on the federal plan and you hear it in every voice. Colorado says one of the federal alternatives leans on “fictitious” water to make its numbers work. The Colorado River District calls the idea of trading water across the basin line a “permanent deprivation” of the Upper Basin. The Imperial Irrigation District calls Reclamation’s explanation for discarding the Lower Basin states’ proposals “opaque doublespeak.” Nevada sued Interior three days after the new rules were issued. Its governor says the Upper Basin states “are not required to contribute a drop.”
Four years ago, Colorado’s top water official put the mood better than any lawyer. Asked how Colorado would respond if the federal government cut its water, Rebecca Mitchell told ProPublica:
“I think everybody that’s about to go through pain wants others to feel pain also.”
Each of these parties is protecting people who depend on this water: farmers, cities, tribes, and a food supply that feeds a good part of the country. A ditch manager in western Colorado told the same reporter, “Oh, we are taking it, and there’s still just not enough.” I don’t think anyone is acting in bad faith. I think each side has learned, over a century, that if it does not defend its share, nobody else will.
The part nobody negotiated
Then there is the part nobody negotiated. In the first quarter of this century the river’s flow has averaged about 12.4 million acre-feet a year, roughly four million below the 16.5 that the Compact and the Mexico treaty divided on paper. This fall, Lake Powell is about 21 to 22 percent full and Lake Mead about 26 to 27 percent. Mother Nature keeps shrinking the pie, and a smaller pie makes every old grievance sharper.
Build for distrust
What do you do when trust is gone and the pie is smaller? The ProPublica reporter, Abrahm Lustgarten, wrote that the states must restore something “even more scarce than the water: trust.” I’m not sure that can be done by asking. I think the better course is to build an arrangement that does not need it.
That means rules that apply themselves when the river drops, so nobody has to plead with a rival for relief. It means numbers anyone can check, produced by people no party hires or fires. It means the same standard for both basins, with real compensation for those asked to give up water. And it means a standing seat for the tribes and Mexico that the states cannot take away.
That is the idea behind the Basin Accord. I have written about it before (Why the Colorado River Needs One), and I am working on a draft agreement. The river will not wait for us to like each other.
I would like to hear from people who know this basin better than I do. What would it take for you to believe the numbers?
— The Centaur Desk